Kushner received emails from Sergei Millian — an alleged dossier source who was in touch with George Papadopoulos

Jared Kushner was copied on emails sent to the Trump
campaign last year from Sergei Millian, a Belarus-born
businessman who was reportedly a key source in the explosive
dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russia.

Millian told associates last year that he was in
regular touch with George Papadopoulos — a campaign foreign
policy adviser who lied to the FBI about the extent and nature
of his contacts with Kremlin-linked foreign nationals.

Millian's relationship with Papadopoulos, who was told
in April 2016 that the Kremlin had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton,
raises questions about what they discussed during the election
and what they relayed to campaign officials.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared
Kushner, was copied on emails sent to the Trump campaign last
year from Sergei Millian, the Belarus-born businessman who has
worked with the Trump Organization and was reportedly a key
source in the explosive dossier
alleging ties between Trump and Russia.

Senate Judiciary Committee leaders said on Thursday
that Trump campaign officials had handed over "communications
with Sergei Millian, copied to Mr. Kushner," that Kushner had
apparently failed to disclose voluntarily. Kushner also received
an email that discussed a "Russian backdoor overture and dinner
invite" from Alexander
Torshin, the deputy head of Russia's
central bank, according to NBC.

Jared Kushner's lawyer told the committee that the
"communications" with Millian were between Millian and Trump's
former lawyer, Michael Cohen, in which Cohen was urging Millian
to stop speaking to the press.

A Washington Post profile from March noted an additional point of
contact: Millian told associates last year that he was in regular
touch with George Papadopoulos — a campaign foreign policy
adviser who pleaded guilty late
last month to making false statements to the FBI about the
extent and nature of his contacts with Kremlin-linked foreign
nationals.

Papadopoulos tried to connect another Trump aide, Boris
Epshtyn, with Millian in September 2016, according to the
Post. Epshtyn said the meeting never happened.

Millian, who is now a US citizen, founded the Russian-American
Chamber of Commerce in 2006 and has described himself as an
exclusive broker for the Trump Organization with respect to the
company's potential real-estate dealings in Russia.

Millian
(R) with Oleg Deripaska.Screenshot/Facebook

He attended several black-tie events at Trump's inauguration, and
told the Russian news agency RIA that he had been in touch with
the Trump Organization as late as April 2016. He was also
photographed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum
in June 2016 with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a longtime
business associate of Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

It was around that time that Millian's organization, the
Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, was looking for
"delegates" to attend the Russian Oil & Gas Forum in
Moscow.

But Millian appears to have begun downplaying his ties to the
Trump Organization after Western reporters started digging into
Trump's Russia ties last summer.

Contrary to what he told RIA, Millian told Business Insider in an
email earlier this year that the last time he worked on a
Trump-brand project was "in Florida around 2008." He did not
respond to a request to clarify the discrepancy.

Millian and the dossier

Millian is also believed to be a key source in a collection of
unverified memos known as the Steele dossier — named after its
author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
The memos outline Trump and his campaign members' ties to Russian
officials and allege Moscow and the Trump campaign worked hand in
hand at points to influence the US election.

ABC reported in
January that "while the published [Trump-Russia] dossier
never names Millian, a version provided to the FBI included
Millian’s name as a source." The Washington Post and the Wall
Street Journal reported later that Millian was either source "D"
or "E" in the dossier, which Millian has denied.

Source D, according to the dossier, had been "present" for
Trump's alleged "perverted conduct in Moscow."

Millian has worked with Rossotrudnichestvo,
a Russian government organization whose "fundamental" goal is to
familiarize "young people from different countries" with Russian
culture through exchange trips to Moscow. The FBI
has investigated whether Rossotrudnichestvo is a front for
the Russian government to cultivate "young, up-and-coming
Americans as Russian intelligence assets" — a theory
Rossotrudnichestvo has strongly denied.

Sergei
Millian at an event following Trump's inauguration on January
20th.Screenshot/Facebook

In January, however, Millian
told Mother Jones he "never got any business with
Rossotrudnichestvo." He did not respond to requests from Business
Insider to clarify that discrepancy.

Source E, meanwhile," acknowledged that the Russian regime had
been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages,
emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the
WikiLeaks platform," according to the dossier.

Source E also claimed that the Trump campaign and Russia had
moles in the Democratic Party; that US-based "cyber operators"
were coordinating attacks on the DNC and Clinton's campaign
chairman John Podesta; and that these operators were being paid
covertly via Russian "diplomatic staff" in "key" US cities via
that Russia's emigre pension system.

"I am one of those very few people who have insider knowledge of
Kremlin politics who has the ability to understand the Russian
mentality and who has been able to successfully integrate in
American society," Millian told ABC in July 2016.

The same source is quoted in the dossier as saying the Trump
campaign was "relatively relaxed" about the attention on Trump's
reported ties to Russia "because it deflected media and the
Democrats' attention away from Trump's business dealings in
China."

Millian has worked as the "vice president of the World Chinese
Merchants Union Association" since 2015, according to his
LinkedIn page. He
wrote last April that he traveled to Beijing to meet with a
Chinese official and the Russian ambassador to the Republic of
San Marino.

Millian's relationship with Papadopoulos raises questions

Millian's relationship with Papadopoulos, moreover — who was told
in April 2016 that the Kremlin had "dirt" on Clinton in the form
of "thousands of emails" — raises questions about what they
discussed during the election and what they relayed to campaign
officials.

According to documents filed by special counsel Robert Mueller's
office and unsealed late last month, Papadopoulos met with a
"professor" in London "on or about April 26, 2016" who told him
that the Russians had obtained "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos
proposed a Trump-Putin meeting during a March 2016 meeting with
Sessions, Gordon, and other campaign foreign policy
advisers.Screenshot/Twitter

"During this meeting, the Professor told defendant that he had
just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with
high-level Russian government officials," one document says.

"The professor told defendant that on that trip he (the
professor) learned that the Russians had obtained "dirt" on
then-candidate Clinton. The professor told defendant
Papadopoulos, as Papadopoulos later described to the FBI, that
'they [the Russians] have dirt on her'; 'the Russians had emails
on Clinton'; 'they have thousands of emails.'"

The document suggests Papadopoulos had known that Russia was
actively trying to undermine Clinton before virtually anyone
else, and it matches some of what the dossier's "source E" —
believed to be Millian — told an associate who then relayed it to
Christopher Steele.

Still, it remains unclear whether Papadopoulos told anyone on the
campaign, or connected to it, about what he had learned. The day
after his meeting with the professor, Papadopoulos emailed one of
the campaign's top policy advisers, Stephen Miller, saying he had
"some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip
when the time is right."